In recent years, a primary focus and concern of the medical profession has been on increasing safety procedures and minimizing the health risks to medical workers. Doctors, nurses, laboratory researchers and other medical care personnel are facing new and increasingly significant health risks every day. For example, AIDS and other deadly and incurable diseases not known twenty years ago are at the forefront of medical treatment problems today. There is, however, much about these diseases that is not known to the medical community, such as all of the various ways by which these diseases can be transmitted and, as in the case of AIDS, how to cure the disease. It therefore is critical that the contact between medical personnel and contaminated materials, i.e., needles, etc., be minimized as much as possible to minimize the health risks to which such workers are exposed.
One of the most significant dangers of transmission of disease and contaminants for medical personnel arises from the use of needles, such as in drawing blood and administering injections. When handling needles, there is always a possibility of the worker being accidentally stuck or stabbed by the needle. Recently, stores of medical workers being accidentally stabbed by contaminated needles and contracting life threatening diseases such as HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, have become all too frequent an occurrence. Often, such accidental contact occurs when the medical worker attempts to replace a protective plastic sheath over the needle. Such protective sheaths generally comprise thin plastic tubes adapted to fit over the needle to prevent contact with the needle.
Herefore, when replacing the protective sheath over a needle, the worker has had to hold the sheath in one hand while inserting the needle therein with their other hand. Accordingly, the worker must exercise extreme care in inserting the needle into the sheath. Even a slight slip or mistake can lead to the worker being stuck by the needle. As activity about the worker increases and the worker becomes stressed, fatigued or distracted, the chances of an accidental stabbing of the worker by a needle significantly increase.
In light of these increasing safety concerns for on medical and health care personnel, attempts have been made to develop devices to minimize the potential for contact between a worker or the person handling a syringe and the needle of the syringe. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,279,577 of Collett discloses a device that is adapted to be mounted to a shelf, about a pole or on a wall in a room. The device has a rest or bracket having a substantially U-shaped opening in which the needle sheath is received and is engaged for removing the sheath from the needle. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 5,242,426 of Pituch and U.S. Pat. No. 5,209,738 of Bruno both disclose stand alone containers or holders in which the sheath for a needle is received and engaged for removing the needle from the sheath. The problem with such devices is that they often are inconvenient to use. Additionally, these devices can be somewhat costly and generally are not portable so that medical care personnel can carry these devices with them for use when and where needed.
Other attempts to guard a needle from contact with the worker handling a syringe have focused on the development of syringe assemblies having shields or guards that are spring-loaded or adapted to otherwise move over the needle to cover the needle when not in use, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,923,447, 4,631,057 and 4,573,976. Such needle shields or covers are, however, expensive to manufacture, especially when considered in terms of the relatively low cost and disposable nature of syringes. Additionally, such protective devices are difficult to manufacture and difficult to use. Thus, while such devices provide enhanced protection against accidental stabbing of medical care personnel by needles when handling a syringe, the cost and difficulty of using such protective cover assemblies unfortunately has severely limited their use.
Accordingly, it can be seen that a need exists for a portable, hand-held medical safety device for removing and replacing the needle within a protective shield for a syringe which is inexpensive to produce and simple and easy to use.